"My dear, you are not that now," Mrs. Sandford said solemnly.
"It all comes to this, Daisy," said the doctor. "You are a psychological puzzle to me. For the matter of that, now I think of it, you always were. When you went to visit Molly Skelton, and carried rose-bushes round the country in your pony-chaise, just as much as now. You are not the same Daisy, however."
"Yes, I am; just the same," I said earnestly.
"Fancy it!" said Mrs. Sandford. "My dear, you do I not see yourself; that is clear."
"I would like to do the same things again," I insisted. But that nearly choked me. For a vision of myself in my happy pony-chaise; the free, joyous child that I was, ignorant of soldiers and wars, further than as I knew my dear Captain Drummond; the vision of the Daisy that once was, and could never be again; went nigh to shake all my composure down. The emotion came with a rush, and I had nearly succumbed to it.
"Miss Randolph has a philosophy," the doctor went on, still watching me, - "which is not common to the world, and which I have hitherto in vain endeavoured to fathom. I have always fancied that I should be happier if I could find it out."
"Did I never tell you what it was, Dr. Sandford?"
"Never - intelligibly. You will excuse me. I do not mean to accuse you, but myself."
"But you know what it is," I said, facing him. "My philosophy, as you call it. It is only, to live for the other world instead of this."
"Why not live for this world, while you are in it, Daisy?"